Guide to the most promising TV in 2013

Karl Quinn

Published: December 2 2012 - 3:00AM

BOLSTERED by the success this year of Howzat!, Beaconsfield and Underground, the free-to-air television networks are again backing based-on-fact Australian dramas as the cornerstone of their 2013 schedules.

The ABC and Nine last week launched their line-ups for next year, following Seven, Ten and SBS in October. And there are some patterns. Food remains a fixation, family dramas are highly favoured, and the ABC in particular has gone crazy for crime, with half a dozen locally made drama series in the works.

Among the biggest surprises are not one but two Kerry Packer mini-series (one on Nine, the other on the ABC), a Schapelle Corby telemovie, and the return to the ABC of Spicks and Specks – host and team captains yet to be announced – after a less-than-two-year hiatus. But given the problems the national broadcaster has had with its once all-conquering Wednesday-night line-up the reboot makes a lot of sense – if they can get it right.

Over on SBS, meanwhile, Saturday night stalwart RocKwiz will be back for an 11th season and its ratings juggernaut Go Back To Where You Came From for a third, though neithe rhas been officially announced yet.

There's much to like in the new programs that have been announced, though undoubtedly many of them will fail to deliver on their promises. With that caveat in mind, here is a guide to what looks like some of the best and most interesting stuff on the box next year.

Australian drama and comedyA Place to Call Home (Seven) stars Marta Dusseldorp (Crownies, Jack Irish, the ABC's forthcoming Crownies spin-off Janet King) in a domestic drama mystery set in 1950s rural Australia. Mrs Biggs (Seven) looks at the relationship between Charmian and Ronnie the great train robber Biggs, including the four years they spent in Australia before he, as the Sex Pistols once so elegantly put it, done a bunk and left for Rio on his own.

Nine continues to dabble in telemovie territory with its stab at the Schapelle Corby story; still no word on who will play the lead in Schapelle, but with a story that will paint her as guilty it is sure to divide the massive audience it's bound to attract.

He died in 2005 but Kerry Packer is busier than ever, with two new drama series lined up for next year. In the ABC's Magazine Wars, he is played by Rob Carlton, as he was in Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo. No word on who will play him in Nine's Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch Story, set in the period 1960-1975, but you'd have to fancy Lachy Hulme to reprise the role he so dominated in Howzat! Both are produced by Southern Star; oh, for a seat at the Packer table at the company's Christmas party.

The Time of Our Lives (ABC) reunites The Secret Life of Us stars Stephen Curry and Claudia Karvan with series co-creator Amanda Higgs and writer Judi McCrossin in a multi-generational family drama series. William McInnes, Justine Clarke and Shane Jacobson also star.

Serangoon Road (ABC) is an Australia-Singapore co-production set in the 1960s with Don Hany as an Australian who gets roped into becoming a private investigator by his glamorous neighbour (Joan Chen). It looks promising.

Not officially announced yet, but Redfern Now (ABC) will be back for a second series, with Jimmy Cracker McGovern once again on board to help guide the stories. Also out of the Indigenous Department is The Gods of Wheat Street, produced by Fiona Eagger and Deb Cox of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries fame. Which will, incidentally, also be back.

A Fremantle production under the hand of drama boss Jo Porter, a former producer of Packed to the Rafters, Wonderland (Ten) is pitched as a romantic comedic drama with an edge. Incidentally, the same stable will bring us Wentworth, a ''re-imagining'' of Prisoner for Pay TV that looks surprisingly promising. There's another blast from the past in Return to Eden (Nine), a remake of the 1980s stab at a local version of a Dallas-style glamour soap.

Fairfax writer Peter FitzSimons' book is the basis for the eight-part drama Batavia (Ten), about the 1629 wreck off the WA coast of the Dutch East India Company's trading vessel. Mutiny, murder and mayhem ensued. It should be fascinating.

Fresh from Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler (The Librarians) is Upper Middle Bogan, a comedy about a doctor who discovers she is adopted and is horrified to find her birth family is ... suburban! Chris Lilley is back too, with a project shrouded in his usual secrecy. Both are on the ABC. On ABC 2, Josh Thomas tries his hand at comedy-drama with the six-part series Please Like Me.

Returns also for Puberty Blues and Offspring (Ten), Packed to the Rafters and Winners and Losers (Seven) and House Husbands and a fresh instalment of the long-running Underbelly franchise, with the 1920s-set Squizzy on Nine.

Imported drama and comedyMr Selfridge (Seven) is set in 1909, and stars Jeremy Piven (Entourage's Ari Gold) as the American founder of the high-end London department store. It's written by BBC costume-drama veteran Andrew Davies and co-stars Australia's Frances O'Connor as the shopkeeper's wife.

Nine's Parade's End looks to have a touch of the Downton about it, with Benedict Cumberbatch (the star of Sherlock) as a man torn between the woman he loves but dare not touch (Australian Adelaide Clemens) and his wife (Rebecca Hall), a woman quite happy to touch whomever she pleases. It's set in London around WWI and is written by Tom Stoppard and has class written all over it in big embossed gold letters.

A fresh take on two classics of English crime both slated for Ten, with Ripper Street revisiting the London of 1888 dominated by Jack The Ripper's rein of terror and Elementary casting Jonny Lee Miller in the lead role in an updated set-in-America take on Sherlock Holmes.

The early word of both is good, as it is for Better Man (SBS), a four-part miniseries about Van Nguyen, a Vietnamese-Australian executed in Singapore in 2005 after being found guilty of drug smuggling. Khoa Do, brother of comedian Anh Do, writes and directs.

Welcome returns for Downton Abbey and Revenge (Seven), The Good Wife, Modern Family and Homeland (Ten) and Call The Midwife (ABC).

FoodNine is clearly working its way through the senses. First came The Voice. Now it's The Taste, a UK cooking competition in which Nigella Lawson and Anthony Bourdain are among the four judges who taste everything blind. We can't wait for The Stench in 2014.

Nine is also jumping on the cake-baking bandwagon, arguably a year or two after it peaked, with The Great Australian Bake Off, to be hosted by Shane ''I'm in everything'' Jacobson and Anna Gare.My Kitchen Rules is back on Seven and MasterChef on Ten. The Professionals looks set to breathe new life into the latter franchise with legendary British chef Marco Pierre White attempting to turn 18 ''good'' chefs into one ''exceptional'' chef. Heat, stir, reduce. Matt Preston is the co-pilot on this food journey.

Ten's Recipe to Riches will attempt to take branded entertainment mainstream as Woolies underwrites a program in which contestants showcase their home recipes in a bid to turn them into supermarket fodder. Is this synergy in action or merely cynical? We'll see.

Reality, factual, light entertainmentThe ABC is reviving Spicks and Specks in a bid to plug what has become a big hole for them on Wednesday nights. Adam Hills is all but ruled out as a host but word has it that seats could be kept warm for Myf and Alan, should they be interested.

It won't be the biggest ratings hit of the year but SBS has one of the most interesting shows, with a sequel to its Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta documentary series of 2012. This time it's the Lebanese-Australian community of Punchbowl under the microscope in the three-parter, with a spin-off online documentary set to examine the Cronulla Riots as a companion piece. Go Back to Where You Came From will be back too, with the promise of yet another spin on the top-rating and much-admired format.

Formal Wars (Seven), looks at the burgeoning school formal industry, worth $3 billion a year we are told. Like Bridezillas for school kids, we imagine.

Keith Urban is back in the musical hot seat, but with American Idol on Ten while his empty chair on The Voice (Nine) will be filled by Latin American heartthrob Ricky Martin.

Australia's Got Talent moves to Nine, after being granted a lifeline just a day after being dumped by Seven. The Block is back too, in two iterations – a celebrity version and the regular variety later in the year. Big Brother returns too, also on Nine. Hey, don't shoot us, we're just the messenger.

The author is on Twitter: @karlkwin

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/guide-to-the-most-promising-tv-in-2013-20121201-2anm6.html